Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley didn’t mince words after MSNBC‘s Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough unexpectedly met with President-elect Donald Trump over the weekend.
The two leftist media pundits railed against Trump leading up to Election Day when he shocked Democrats by taking a sweeping victory at the Electoral College, as well as winning the popular vote.
With Brzezinski and Scarborough subsequently descending upon Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home to extend an olive branch ahead of his January inauguration, Haley suggested their move was less than sincere during a recent episode for her SiriusXM show, Nikki Haley Live.
“[T]he truth is, it’s not that they suddenly saw the light. It’s that they saw the ratings,” the former ambassador told radio host Charlamagne tha God on Monday.
Haley served as Trump’s ambassador to the U.N. during his first administration. She mounted a brief campaign against him during the GOP presidential primaries earlier this year, later dropping out to endorse Trump ahead of the election.
While their relationship has often run hot and cold, Haley didn’t shy away from knocking Trump’s one-time media foes this week.
“I mean, let’s be clear. They [Brzezinski and Scarborough] saw the ratings tank and they realized, ‘Oh, we better get on with Donald Trump, or else we’re not going to have a show,’” she continued after noting that the duo had previously “tor[n] me up when I said anything about voting for Donald Trump or what I agreed with him on, even though I criticized him when I thought he was wrong.”
In the week following the election, Morning Joe ratings from Nov. 6 to Nov. 14 were down 22%, according to Nielsen data.
Although he’s Democratic-leaning and supported Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election, tha God agreed with Haley’s assessment in a rare moment of solidarity.
“It’s a ratings and revenue game,” he replied. “What I don’t understand is, if you don’t like something that somebody’s saying, if you don’t like something that somebody’s doing, why not go talk to that person about it and challenge them right then and there?” he continued.
The Morning Joe duo has been fiercely critical of the president-elect over the years, but their anti-Trump rhetoric reached a new fever pitch in September when Scarborough said that “it’s not a reach” to compare him to Adolf Hitler, the German Nazi who murdered six million Jews during the Holocaust.
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However, after Trump secured a decisive victory against Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this month, the MSNBC hosts announced they had realized “it’s time to do something different.”
“That starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him,” the pair told viewers on Monday.
